By Fr Pat Amobi Chukwuma
I am made in Jos. That means I was born and brought up in Jos; the Tin City, in those good old days when you could go out and come back peacefully at any hour of the day or night. My parents and my siblings were living at Ojukwu Street, Jenta, Jos. My father was the landlord, while my mother was the kitchen-lord. Many families from different ethnicities were living in our yard. All the tenants were friendly. They shared a common kitchen, common bathroom and common toilet.
Enmity was rare. In the kitchen, the mothers kept their stoves, pots and cooking utensils, without suspicion. No one thought of poisoning the other. If your soup suddenly finished, one could approach any tenant in the yard to borrow some soup.
As children, we ate in every family living in the same yard. Also we played together and interacted in a friendly manner. Animosity was on vacation in those good, old days.
Unfortunately today, things have really fallen apart and the centre no longer holds. Wickedness has thrown its hat in the ring. Thus there is fire on the mountain. Consequently, everybody is running helter-skelter.
In those days in Jos, I and my boys company used to go to the Township Stadium Jos to watch policemen or soldiers on parade. They displayed different kinds of music and acrobatic acts which gave us maximum joy. For us then, parade was always a joyful occasion. Sadness was never part of it.
When we returned to our yard, we mimicked the soldiers or police by staging our own parade, using empty cans as musical instruments and sticks as guns. The biggest boy among us was made the commander. We obeyed promptly and saluted him respectively. Any disrespect merited the offender kneeling down or receiving some strokes of artificial canes.
Hardly did I know that evil can also go on parade. Shivers ran down my spinal cord when I heard first that the police were parading some criminals in their station on a certain day. I went there to watch the parade. Some hand and leg cuffed dare-devil armed robbers were brought out as the DPO was calling out their names, their weapons and ethnicities. Wickedness was engraved on their faces. The guns used by the criminals caused me the earthquake of the heart. Consequently, I was buried totally in fear. I exclaimed, “What an evil parade!” Immediately, I took to my heels without looking back.
Whatever God created was good. Wickedness was not part and parcel of God’s creative activity. Wickedness emerged from nowhere in the Book of Genesis, Chapter four, which narrates the story of two siblings named Cain and Abel. The former was a farmer, while the latter was a shepherd. Abel offered a fatty firstborn of his flock to God. God was pleased with his worthy sacrifice. For his part, Cain offered useless fruits and God rejected them. Consequently, envy crowded the face of Cain. He lured his brother, Abel, to a lonely place and killed him mercilessly. God shouted from heaven to Cain asking, “Where is your brother Abel?” He answered, ”I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). God cursed Cain for his wickedness. From then wickedness spread like smoke.
Man’s inhumanity to man became unbearable, such that God was deeply displeased. The Holy Scripture puts it this way: “Yahweh saw how great was the wickedness of man on the earth and that evil was always the only thought of his heart. Yahweh regretted having created man on the earth and his heart grieved” (Gen. 6:5-6). God vowed to blot out man from the face of the earth. With justified anger, God wiped out both the wicked and the innocent ones through the deluge that lasted for forty days. Only Noah, his family and selected species of animals were saved inside Noah’s gigantic boat. Does God regret creating you? Is the vice of wickedness rooted in your heart?
God is just and merciful. After the deluge that wiped out man from the face of the earth, God was touched to the heart. Thus He vowed, “Never again will I curse the earth because of man, even though his heart is set on evil from childhood; never again will I strike down every living creature as I have done” (Gen. 8:21). No wonder man takes God for granted and grows in wickedness day by day. The merciful God is tolerant. Thus, Jesus Christ tells us about the parable of the good seeds and the weeds in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Chapter 13. A certain man sowed wheat in his farm. At an odd time an enemy went into the farm and sowed weeds among the wheat.
Both seeds look alike as they sprout. The servants of the farmer volunteered to uproot the weeds. The farmer objected in these words: “No, when you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat with them. Let them just grow together until harvest; and at harvest time I will say to the workers, ”Pull up the weeds first, tie them in bundles and burn them; then gather the wheat into my barn’” (Mtt. 13:30). The wheat depicts goodness while the weed depicts wickedness. Are you wheat or weed? By their fruits you know them!
In a junior class, the teacher was instructing the pupils on Religious Knowledge. The topic was, “The Fatherhood of God”. In a simple language the teacher was explaining to them that God is Father. But one of the pupils, five years old, objected by raising her hand. She boldly told the teacher that God is not father. The teacher asked her, “Why?” She innocently said, “God is not father because my father is very wicked. He beats my mum every day.” The teacher couldn’t help laughing to the extent that tears ran down her cheeks. One of the observant pupils asked, “Teacher, why are you crying?” The teacher replied, “My children, don’t mind me. It is the tears of amusement.” Wickedness is tearful.
This world which God created out of his love has been turned into the field of wickedness. The wickedness has grown wild wings and is flying ferociously all the places. It seems that its abode is located in our country Nigeria. There was once a time that Nigerians were regarded as the happiest people on earth. In those days, I asked my German friend on visit his view about Nigeria. Without mincing words he asserted, “Nigerians are suffering but happy.” Are we still suffering and happy today? No! The tides have drowned our happiness. The Holy Book says, “When the righteous are in power, the people rejoice. But when the wicked rules, the people mourn” (Proverbs 29:2). Nigerians have been roasted in wickedness from different angles.
Wickedness is walking freely in the streets of Nigeria. Terrorists, bandits and kidnappers are on rampage. Blood is flowing like flood here and there. Human parts are being harvested and sold for money. Cannibalism is on the rise. Wickedness now lives in the forests nationwide. Traveling by land has become a nightmare. Travellers and villagers are being abducted with huge ransoms attached. Many have been killed therein. Day and night are shrouded in wickedness. The government whose duty is to safeguard the lives of the citizens goes about with tight security outfit while the citizens are on their own. How long can God tolerate this extreme wickedness in Nigeria in particular and in the world in general? Is the end of the world imminent? Let us watch and pray.
